


Deep with the First Dead

by moemachina



Category: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before a shipwreck on the coast of Illyria, Olivia mourns the death of her brother. And then time passes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep with the First Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/gifts).



> The title comes from Dylan Thomas.

Her brother had brought her bird nests, driftwood, the sweetest apples.

Black cloth covered every mirror. The fires remained unlit. Wind howled against the walls of her house, but the stone was indifferent and unchanging.

Olivia wreathed herself in rosemary and rue. 

She ate nothing for three days. Walking to the chapel, there was a roaring in her ears. She could hear nothing. People shook her hand, kissed her on the cheek, embraced her. She permitted herself to be handled as if she were a doll. The duke was there, holding her cold hands in his warm ones, speaking to her in a low, urgent tone, but Olivia understood nothing. She dumbly nodded until he released her. Her mouth was very dry. The marble vault gleamed before her. The names of her parents were carved on its front. Her father's name was still fresh. They had not had time to carve her brother's name.

At some point, her uncle was at her side. His hand was under her elbow, and she was dimly aware that, without his support, she might fall. Toby smelled of wine and smoke. He was unshaven. They did not speak. 

Linen cloth was laid over the top of the vault. Candles were lit. The priest spoke. 

There was a bird fluttering in Olivia's breast. She could feel its frantic wings beating against her ribs. There were spots dancing in front of her eyes.

Her maid Maria brought her back to the house and removed her veil. Olivia obediently sat down on her bed as her maid went to fill a basin with water. In the distance, she could hear the sound of revelry: the mourners drinking their ale and eating their funeral cakes. Someone was singing. She thought it might be her father's fool.

It all felt very distant. 

"So," she whispered, her voice sounding cracked and strange from disuse. "It is over, then." 

The sun was very bright outside her window. 

"Never again," she said.

When Maria came back, she found Olivia curled up on her side, like a babe with her knees tucked into her chest. In sleep, her face was serene.

****

Time passed. The birds returned to their old nests in the eaves of the house. Yellow flowers appeared between the flagstones of the front walk. The farmers cut down the tall grass with silver scythes.

She had been raised to sit up straight, play the harp, make her letters, and do a little embroidery. Her brother had learned Latin, Greek, how to hold a sword, how to do his sums, how to look over the estate. She had never envied him. Their mother was long dead, and their father had a deep voice and an uncertain temper. Olivia had been glad to escape his notice. She had been glad to sit quietly in their shadows. 

They were gone now. Their shade no longer afforded any protection.

Malvolio brought her the account-books and made her check the numbers in every column. He showed her the household receipts and told her who was cheating her. He found pen and ink; he gave her things to sign. If she had been able, she would have given him all the responsibilities of the estate, but he would not let her. She was the lady of the house now, he said. She must bear the burden.

He was not kind to her.

Her uncle drank. He disappeared for weeks at a time and then abruptly returned, late at night, in disreputable company. When he brought back woman, Maria would grow tight-eyed and grim. When he brought back men, Malvolio locked up the wine cellars. From her bed, Olivia listened to him sing bawdy songs in the kitchen with her father's fool. He brought back exotic hothouse flowers and abandoned them in unexpected heaps throughout the house. 

When he passed out in strange corners of the house, her father's fool would tenderly bundle him off to bed. On more than one occasion, Toby would clutch the fool's collar and murmur indistinctly, and the fool would laugh, and sing him lullabies, and soothe him as a mother soothes a fretful child. In the distance, Olivia would hear his chuckling voice echoing through the halls: "Yes, Sir Toby. He knew that, Sir Toby. You'll do your best, Sir Toby. Shhh, Sir Toby."

Her uncle was not a comfort to her.

Malvolio made dark hints to Olivia that she need no longer suffer the burden of hosting her uncle. Olivia sat at her father's desk. From here, she could see the door of the family chapel and the portly, balding shape of her uncle passing through it. He held a bunch of pale lilies in his hand. 

"He will stay, Malvolio," Olivia said, and it felt like the first time she had spoken in years. "I will not permit you to throw out my father's brother." 

Malvolio was thin-lipped. "As you wish, lady." 

Olivia did not wish anything, save maybe to be left alone. That wish was denied to her. Malvolio had no end of ledgers to set before her. Maria persisted in washing her hair and mending her clothes. Her uncle brought her oranges and pickles. The fool performed cartwheels under her bedroom window. The birds sang from the eaves of the house, and the farmers cut down the waves of tall green grass.

Yellow flowers bloomed between the stones. Every time she passed an uncovered mirror, she could see the rising changes in her skin. It was as if Life was reclaiming her, inch by inch, capillary by capillary. 

She rebelled against this resurrection. She would not lose him a second time. Never again. 

****

In the beginning, the Duke of Illyria's suit was merely an annoyance.

"No, Maria, I will not attend his hunt," or "No, Maria, I have no desire to attend a banquet," or "No, please, Maria, I do not like plays." 

She thought little of it. Beneath the mantle of mourning, her refusals could give no offense. If she entertained any faint suspicion that the Duke's missives were strangely frequent and peculiarly pressing -- if any such suspicions arose, she firmly suppressed them as soon as they arose. Such thoughts reminded her of the doves cooing on her roof, or Maria's swaying walk when she knew Toby was watching, or perhaps even the warmth of Malvolio's breath on her ear as he sat at her side and directed her attention to various household accounts. Such thoughts felt disturbing and strange. Such thoughts felt disloyal to her brother in the cold ground.

Thus, even as her year of mourning drew to a close, her refusals remained consistent. She would not see the Duke of Illyria. His messengers beat against the doors of her house to no avail. His hounds sought her in vain.

And then, one morning, he found her. 

Olivia had gone for a walk, somewhat against her will. Malvolio had bullied her into looking at the rents, and now Olivia was grimly stalking to the edge of her estate to look at the decaying remains of a former holding that -- Malvolio claimed -- could be rebuilt to good and profitable advantage. 

Maria accompanied her. Neither spoke. The sun was warm against Olivia's skin. She found herself listening to the chorus of insects around them. The wind ruffled the branches of the surrounding trees; uncultivated lands bordered her estates on this side. The sea was a distant murmur.

There was an explosion of sound in the undergrowth to the left, and a stag burst from the forest. Olivia and Maria froze as it bounded across their path and raced to the fields on their right. A second behind it, a trio of mounted hunters appeared in pursuit. 

Olivia was startled by the burst of indignation that flashed through her. These were her lands. _How dare they._

The lead hunter cantered forward to where Olivia and Maria stood, and Olivia recognized the Duke of Illyria. 

"Do you have any idea where you are?" she demanded.

"My apologies, fair lady," Duke Orsino said. "We were hunting on my lands to the east and followed our prey here." 

Olivia stared up at him. "And now you may follow no longer, my lord, lest you trespass." She herself was somewhat startled by the calm, unruffled ferocity that she heard in her own voice. _Father would speak like that_ , she thought. 

Duke Orsino said nothing, and then he said, "There are some hunts that are impossible to call off, my lady." 

Maria tensed beside her, but Olivia merely folded her arms. "Some prey are impossible to catch, my lord." 

"I have not found that to be true," Orsino said, and his horse moved restlessly beneath him. "Such formality, Olivia. You do not respond to my letters."

"I have nothing to say to them, my lord," Olivia said. "I do not attend plays. I do not feast. I do not hunt." 

"Yet you have caught me," Orsino said. "Or maybe you have always had me."

"I release you, then, my lord."

Orsino pressed his heart to his chest. "It is not that easy. My life is a torment, Olivia. Will you not release me from _that_? How can you be so cold?" 

"I know naught of what you speak, my lord," Olivia said wearily. 

"They tell me," he said suddenly, "that you will not put off mourning for your brother. I see you still wear black." 

Olivia said nothing. 

"I, too, miss your brother, Olivia," he said. "He was a good man." 

"Yes," Olivia said. 

"Yet you do him no service by following him into his tomb."

Olivia stiffened. "Your hart has fled, my lord. I fear you will not catch it. Turn back, my lord." 

"Do you have any idea of the pain that I endure? My heartache? My agony?" 

Rage cracked through her. She had forgotten how rage felt, and for a moment, she could not breathe or speak or see.

"My heart?" 

"My lord," she breathed, "you have lost your prey. Go back to your own fields. And I warn you that the men of my estate are wary of poachers, my lord. I caution you not to venture across my borders again, lest they shoot you."

She turned around and strode back in the direction of the house. Maria hurried to match her stride. Behind her, she could hear Orsino calling her name, but he did not follow her. 

"That fool," she hissed, her hands clenching and unclenching at her side. "That _fool_. " 

"Yes, my lady," Maria said diplomatically.

"Tell Malvolio that I've lost my patience with poachers," Olivia said. "Tell him to take a hard line." 

"He will do so with pleasure, my lady," Maria said with a sigh. 

For the rest of the day, Olivia tried to recover her numb tranquility, her wonderful coldness. It came with difficulty, and even then it was imperfect. She felt like a mended plate still visibly cracked. Anger quickened her pulse, flushed her skin, increased her temperature.

That night, she was the one to raise the subject of the account-books to Malvolio, and she argued vigorously with him about his plans for the eastern vineyards. At dinner, she ate everything on her plate for the first time in a year.

Her uncle poured her a second glass of wine, and her father's fool grinned at her from across the table. 

That night, she sat in the middle of her bed and sobbed brokenly for hours.

****

Time passed.

Her father's fool could not be found. Olivia did not miss him, not precisely, but she did not like losing track of her household.

Her brother had liked him, she remembered. Her brother had always spoken highly of the fool's good sense. Olivia had not yet seen evidence of this good sense, but she had trusted her brother's judgment. She had been afraid of her father, so tall and so loud, but her brother had never raised his voice to her. He was always patient in his explanations, and he was always noticing things that Olivia had not seen.

"That fool should be here," Olivia said to Maria. "I do not feed him so he can go running across the countryside. He should know his place." 

"Yes, my lady," Maria said, brushing her hair.

Her uncle brought a series of silly young men to dinner. Olivia did not bother to remember their names. At night, she would hear them drinking and carousing and singing. They frequently toasted her health. 

"I promised her father, you know," she would hear Toby shouting from the kitchens. "I promised him that I would see her settled and squared away, and by God's knee, I _will_ , and let me tell you--" and similar things in this vein. 

When Malvolio muttered darkly about the noise and the expense, Olivia shrugged. "Let him tarry a while longer," Olivia said. "I will not cast out my kin. Now show me the grain reports again, Malvolio." 

One night, she dreamed about her brother. Not the way that he'd been at the end, but younger, perhaps fifteen years old, with his voice on the cusp of changing. They had been the same height in those days. 

He had held a robin's egg in his hands. "A present for the wedding," he told her. 

"I am no bride," she told him. 

In his hands, the egg began to rock back and forth. A crack appeared. 

Something was hatching, but she woke before it emerged.

****

"I have no interest in Orsino's emissaries."

"I see," the man said. His eyes were clear and deep. 

"I am yet in mourning."

The man nodded easily. He was young and clean-shaven. He did not loom over her. He did not raise his voice. His hands were fine-boned and beautiful. 

"The Duke feels your grief deeply, my lady," he said. 

"The Duke feels everything deeply," Olivia said. 

The man shrugged and looked at the floor. "I had a brother who died, my lady. I feel your grief." 

"Indeed?" 

The man looked back to her, and his eyes were _so_ clear and and _so_ deep. "Indeed. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think, oh, I must tell Sebastian this dream. And then I remember anew that he is gone, that he no longer will counsel me on my problems or tease me about my day. I am diminished by his absence. So yes," said the man named Cesario, "I indeed feel your grief."

Flowers bloomed between the stones beneath their feet, and Olivia felt the heavy, hot blood ticking through her veins. "How can you bear to live with it?"

The beautiful man in her garden cocked his head thoughtfully to the side. "How could I not? I must live, for Sebastian's sake. I must be his living monument. I must live twice as hard, for his sake."

"And me?" Olivia asked. 

"And you as well, my lady. Do you think you can bear it?"

"Perhaps," Olivia said. "Perhaps I begin to see the way."


End file.
